Frequently Asked Questions
- Our department is currently not on FASmail, how can we migrate to Exchange Online?
- To initiate a request, please submit a ticket to the IT Service Centre with information about your service, the number of mailboxes, and indicate your unit’s affiliation with UBC.
- Will there be any changes made to my email after migration to Microsoft Exchange Online?
- All of your email and calendar entries will be migrated from FASmail (on-premise Exchange) to Exchange Online. Most features will be immediately familiar to those who currently access their email on-premise. After the migration, you will notice that your default mailbox quota will have significantly increased.
- Will Staff and Faculty get access to the Microsoft 365 Office Suite?
- All active UBC employees will have access to web versions of the Microsoft 365 Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc...). Once mailboxes have been migrated and eligibility has been finalized, access to the downloadable version of the Office applications will be made available to the majority of active Faculty/Staff.
- With my data being stored in the cloud, will Microsoft have access to my data?
- No, Microsoft does not have access to data in UBC’s M365 tenant.
- Who can I contact for questions or concerns about data protection and privacy?
- For questions about the service, please contact the IT Service Centre at https://it.ubc.ca/support for assistance.
- Will there be training provided to end users or department admins on how to use Exchange Online?
- Yes, we are planning monthly Online Drop-in sessions for Exchange Online as well as Teams and OneDrive. Additionally, we will be building knowledge-based articles and how-to guides for using Exchange Online basic functionality. Advanced out-of-box functionality support will be provided by Microsoft Support guides.
Pre-Migration
Faculty/Staff will get a 50GB mailbox quota. We do recommend emptying your Deleted Items, and also purging items from your Recover Deleted Items folder (link found at the top of the Deleted Items folder) so that unnecessary emails are not migrated. Cleaning up your mailbox and deleting old email is highly recommended to speed up the migration process for everyone.
PST files attached in Outlook will continue to be available after the mailbox migration. Cleaning up your mailbox is highly recommended.
No, you will continue to have access to your email during migration. Although email will continue to be accessible, we would suggest that you close your email client at the end of the business day to avoid any unexpected issues. If needed, you can always access your mailbox via webmail at www.mail.ubc.ca.
During Migration
There is no expected downtime for email during migration, and email delivery should flow as normal during that time.
Post-Migration
You can sign into your M365 Exchange Online account with your firstname.lastname@ubc.ca email and your CWL password at https://portal.office.com.
The supported add-ins for M365 Exchange Online are Zoom and Salesforce. To ensure a smooth transition over the course of the year, only critical add-ins will be considered based on demand. All Outlook add-ins will need to go through a Privacy Impact Assessment.
The issue of not being able to access the Teams calendar post-migration is temporary and specific to the Teams desktop App. This is a self-resolving problem that typically takes about 24 - 48 hours to resolve. In the meantime, you can access your Teams calendar via the mobile App or use your Outlook calendar as an alternative until this issue is resolved.
No, you do not need to reinstall the Outlook application after migration if you are using a supported version of Microsoft Office (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/endofsupport/microsoft-365-services-connectivity).
We are not expecting any changes for personal Microsoft account. However, we do recommend that if you are using your work email for a personal Microsoft account, you should explore working with Microsoft to change this.
Yes, users will be able to use Outlook for Mobile (on iOS and Android) app after migration to Exchange Online.
UBC Mail Relays will operate the same way after migration. Email destined for FASmail and Exchange Online will still go through the UBC Mail Relays for spam and virus scanning.
Departments can continue to host their own mail servers as long as they are compliant with UBC’s security standards. However, these users may HYPERLINK "mailto:fn.ln@ubc.ca" require an additional FASmail mailbox that has their fn.ln@ubc.ca alias associated with it to access Microsoft 365.
Yes, departmental branded mail domains can still be used after migration. However, you will need to use your fn.ln@ubc.ca address as your login name.
Will existing FASmail generic mailboxes & external contacts be migrated over to the new environment?
Yes, FASmail generic (aka shared mailboxes), resource mailboxes and external contacts will be migrated to Exchange Online.
IMAP is a legacy protocol. As part of this deployment, the project team is looking at including Thunderbird (newer version) as an email client that supports IMAP. The latest versions of Thunderbird support Modern Authentication so please ensure that you are running the latest version of Thunderbird. Those who have applications that use IMAP may need to explore alternative connection methods. These mailboxes will be left until the end of the migration to give more time to explore options.
Yes, email will be accessible outside of Canada without VPN, however, it is recommended to access UBC electronic information securely when working remotely via secure methods such as VPN. Multi-Factor Authentication will be required to access Microsoft 365. For more information, please see Information Security Standard U6.
